Bernard Care Center

While we gave this nursing home a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a B for our inspections category. This is the result of the facility receiving a decent inspection report this year. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is generally best to avoid facilities that had a long list of severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

We were also surprised to discover that this facility received a somewhat respectable long-term care grade in our assessment. We awarded it a grade of C in that category. Long-term care grades are typically used to measure a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 24.999998 percent of its patients for pneumonia. On a more positive note, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Unfortunately, this nursing home only received a grade of D for its short-term care score, which is not an impressive grade. In forming these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. With a score in this range for this category, we were not surprised to learn that this place was well below average in many staffing figures we focus on. The facility provided far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most facilities. The final measure we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.

The next area we assessed was nursing, in which this facility was given a very poor grade in this category also. Sadly, it received an abysmal F in this category, which is definitely a major disappointment. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we consider the quantity of hours nurses are seeing residents and the levels of training of the nurses. This place offered just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This place performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these statistics to be measures of the quality of nursing care.